CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Construction started Monday on a $60 million, mixed-use project that will remake a key intersection at the juncture of the Ohio City neighborhood and downtown Cleveland.

Two years after the Snavely Group announced its intentions for land and buildings at West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue, a development team led by the Chagrin Falls-based company has purchased the properties and put financing in place. Real estate records show that pieces of the complex deal came together Thursday.

Studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments there will range from 500 to 1,100 square feet. Based on what local landlords are charging today, rents might fall between $1,000 and $2,500 a month. Residents will have access to a rooftop deck with a swimming pool on the Lake Erie side of the building, a fire pit, grilling stations, a lounge, a dog-grooming station and indoor parking.

The Music Settlement, an East Side nonprofit focused on early-childhood education, music education and music therapy, has committed to opening a school on the first floor of the apartment building. The Grocery, a local grocery store expanding to its second location, and other commercial tenants will round out the new construction portion of the project, which is scheduled to open in spring 2018.

On the south side of Detroit, the development team is sprucing up the ground floor and basement of two historic commercial buildings, making way for a co-working space. That shared workplace, called the Beauty Shoppe, could debut in spring 2017. Massimo da Milano, a restaurant that anchors the corner, will stay open.

Ground-floor commercial space at the Forest City Bank Building (left) and the Seymour Block (right) will be revamped, with a co-working space set to go in next door to the existing Massimo da Milano restaurant. A later phase of the project calls for low-income apartments upstairs.Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

"It took time," Pete Snavely, Jr., of the Snavely Group said of getting from a concept to a closing. "It took longer than anybody wanted it to. But it was a nice display of people working together."

The developers paid roughly $3.5 million for the project site and nearby land.

Those acquisitions included the historic Forest City Bank Building, home to Massimo; the neighboring Seymour Block building; the parking lot and a small, vacant building north of Detroit; a two-story building just south of Massimo; and a parcel on the east side of West 25th, on a hillside that's been talked about as a possible park location.

Public records show that more than 40 documents associated with the project were filed last week, speaking to the complexity of the transaction. The deal required a land swap with the city of Cleveland to make room for both the apartment building and an expanded green space next to it - public space the developer will maintain.

The project involved 25 sources of financing, including bank loans; developer equity; bonds issued by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority; New Markets Tax Credits aimed at boosting investment in low-income areas; participation from a bevy of civic groups; a Cuyahoga County loan; and city assistance including property-tax abatement for new residential construction and tax-increment financing, a structure in which some new property-tax revenues generated by a project are redirected to paying off debt.

"This project has taught me a lot about what you can do in Cleveland," Snavely said. "And some of these more ambitious projects have their challenges just by nature of being in Cleveland. The banking environment is challenging right now. ... There's not a ton of people that can do these big projects. And the big banks are focused on coastal markets because they're not in Cleveland."

The $60 million price tag does not include a second phase of planned development, on the upper floors of the Forest City Bank Building and Seymour Block.

The Snavely-led team aims to turn those floors into 38 low-income apartments, in a project that could get under way next year and open in 2018. The developers have secured state and federal historic-preservation tax credits for the renovations and are pursuing additional, competitive tax credits for low-income rental housing.

Buildings once lined both sides of Detroit Avenue, as shown in this undated historic photo looking west.Cleveland Landmarks Commission

Referencing historic pictures that show how buildings once lined both sides of Detroit, Snavely described the project as the "rebirth of a significant intersection" - one that's been partially barren for decades. Other developers are filling gaps to the west and south with new apartment complexes and conversions of historic buildings.

"This is a 50-year change for this corner," Tom McNair, executive director of the Ohio City, Inc., neighborhood nonprofit, said of the Snavely project. "These opportunities don't come around very often.

"I think, sometimes, it's easy to lose the enormity of the size of this project," he added. "Most of the time when people think of these large-scale projects, they think of Flats East Bank and those types of things. But this is almost three square city blocks. I don't think people realize the magnitude of the impact that this is going to have on the neighborhood - in a very positive way."